France returns Nazi-stolen Degas drawing to rightful owners

France has returned a drawing by Edgar Degas to its rightful owner after enlisting genealogists to track down the heir of a Jewish collector whose work was confiscated by the Nazis.

The work was the first be returned to heirs who have made no claim using a new process of working with French family tree experts.

In a moving ceremony in Paris on Monday, Audrey Azoulay, the French culture minister, said that Trois Danseuses en Buste - a late 19th-century charcoal sketch of three ballerinas - was found in 1951 in a cupboard in a building used as the German Embassy during the Nazi occupation.

It had since remained unclaimed in the Louvre.

Viviane Dreyfus accepted the drawing for her father, Maurice, who died in 1957 without ever speaking of the lost work.

She said she was "extremely touched," especially because she didn't know the piece existed.

Trois Danseuses en Buste Credit:
RMN GRAND PALAIS/EPA

It was confiscated in 1940 and while other works belonging to Mr Dreyfus were returned after the war, the Degas was not among them.

When it resurfaced, nobody made the link to his missing work, so it was registered as MNR, for "musées nationaux récupération" (national museums recovery) and placed under the legal responsibility of the French foreign ministry.

There are 2,000 such unclaimed works sitting in French museums, of which at least 145 were stolen by the Nazis.

A portrait of Maurice DreyfusCredit:
LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP

The culture ministry said it had decided to "identify the owner of works without waiting for heirs to make themselves known" due to the "disappearance of direct witnesses and the small number of requests (to recover works)".

"The return of this drawing is the first result using a new process" of working with French genealogists, it said, adding that they were currently tracking down the original owners and heirs of five other art works.

Ms Azoulay said she wanted that explanatory texts accompanying works in French museums to be "explicit on the origin of MNR (unclaimed) works, along with catalogues, guides, internet sites and all other support material".